


Blood Lotus

by AndromedaofOthys



Series: Dies Irae/Kajiri Kamui Kagura fics [6]
Category: Dies Irae (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Exploration of the Canon, Lotus Reichhart and Michael Wittmann Join Longinus Dreizehn Orden Earlier, Multi, Obsessive Wilhelm Ehrenburg, One-sided Wilhelm Ehrenburg/Beatrice von Kircheisen, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26893330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndromedaofOthys/pseuds/AndromedaofOthys
Summary: Something deviated from the plan early on. Michael Wittmann - Gotz von Berlichingen, Machina - and Lotus Reichhart - Zarathustra Ubermensch, past Fujii Ren - attract Mercurius' attention far earlier, on the same night when Reinhard Heydrich shed his skin of normalcy. Brought into the fold earlier and pitted against each other in a hunt for the Holy Relic that would secure them seat Sieben of the Longinus Dreizehn Orden, Lotus and Michael's bond will be tested as their cravings clash under the masterful orchestration of one bored God and his violence-thirsty Apoptosis... and the ethereal Maiden of Twilight.
Relationships: Beatrice von Kircheisen & Eleonore von Wittenburg, Lotus Reichhart & Anna Maria "Rusalka" Schwagerin, Lotus Reichhart & Michael Wittmann, Reinhard Heydrich & Longinus Dreizehn Orden, Reinhard Heydrich & Mercurius | Karl Krafft
Series: Dies Irae/Kajiri Kamui Kagura fics [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923934
Kudos: 2





	1. The first deviation from the plan

The night of 25th of December, 1939.

It was the moment Mercurius – Suigin, God of the Fourth Heaven – always held dear to his heart, no matter how many times he had to go through it. His dear golden, beastly companion, Mephistopheles Reinhard Heydrich, had finally come out of his shell of mediocrity and blindness was always a sight to see, and Mercurius maintained that, apart from hopefully one day granting his Throne to his most precious flower Marguerite, this was the high point of his sad, hopeless existence.

That being said, the circumstances under which he came out were always so predictably boring, he couldn’t help but let his attention wander; after he dismissed half of his future fangs and claws, as the Golden Beast liked to call them, and lit into another two of their number, Mercurius found himself drawn to the church nearby. The fight had originally started in Pariser Platz, right in front of the Brandenburg Gate, but had moved to Postdamer Platz where Reinhard had stepped in; the church at Postdamer had been open for some reason despite the Christmas midnight mass being long over, and Mercurius meandered in, curious as to what had drawn him to check it.

Upon slinking through the open doors, his breath nearly stopped. No wonder he had been drawn to this place – no wonder he wanted to come here!

Lotus Reichhart was lazing on the bench near the front end of the church, deeply engrossed in the book, flanked by Michael Wittmann who seemed content to watch his friend read and only occasionally check the surroundings.

_Zarathustra, Gotz von Berlichingen – Machina… how wonderful to meet you again._

Of course, neither man was yet what they would later become; Machina was still painfully human and unsteady, and Zarathustra’s soul was still whole, not torn in half like before to satisfy Mercurius’ curiosity. It still begged the question of why, exactly, had he been attracted to meet the two long before they should’ve met. He could not recall a single time where he met the two candidates for the seat Sieben before they manifested inside Gladsheimr and fought everyone until only they remained and Michael won the right to the seat.

Oh well. This was something… well, not exactly new, for he had met those two so many times, but something unusual. Mercurius was sure things would continue going the way they should; inviting the two was not going to be a deal-breaker. And if it ended up changing things so much that it brought something unknown… well, it had always been Mercurius’ dearest wish to die, and his lovely substitute and his once best friend had been unprecedented in their strength and will to help. As long as he managed to manipulate the two of them to care about the dear Marguerite, everything would be fine.

“Frohe Weihnachten, gentlemen,” Mercurius greeted jovially, striding deeper into the church towards the pair.

Lotus startled, the book nearly falling out of his lap, and Michael jumped a little in his seat before the two pairs of eyes swiveled around to look at the disguised deity.

“Frohe Weihnachten,” Michael was the first to recover his senses. “Come to pray?”

“Mm, I’m afraid I have little faith in higher powers,” Mercurius chuckled, finding immense joy in obfuscating while still telling the truth. He wouldn’t be a God right now if he hadn’t had little faith in the rule and Law of Myoujou, Morning Star Nerose Satanael, and he had even less faith in himself. “However, the ruckus outside forced me to find a shelter, and church seemed far more hospitable and uncaring of tresspassers than the residential buildings.”

“We had heard the noise, but we figured it was just drunks as usual,” Michael shrugged, his broad shoulders accentuated by the crisply done military uniform, all buttons done properly and lines pressed. Lotus on the other hand stayed silent, looking slightly sloppy in his untucked white shirt and unbuttoned jacket, but eyeing Mercurius with suspicion and something that almost resembled recognition.

Mercurius was impressed – had his dear son’s previous incarnation truly had that good of a second sense to figure out something wasn’t quite right about this scenario? He knew Lotus had served under _Ahnenerbe_ for a stint in defiance of his family’s executioner tradition before transferring out into the regular army to support Michael; was he already part of army, or was he still under _Ahnenerbe’_ s yoke?

“Well, I cannot say for sure if they were drunks, but they were ready to pull out knives and guns at each other,” Mercurius sighed theatrically, slumping into the bench right behind Machina and Zarathustra to further solidify his act. “The last I saw, someone from Gestapo was arriving on the scene.”

“Gestapo cleaning things up?” Lotus spoke for the first time, and Mercurius carefully tracked every single microexpression, every single twitch, finding more and more similarities with Zarathustra and himself the longer he looked. It made him feel supremely uncomfortable, if he was going to be honest to himself. “That’s a bit unusual.”

“Gestapo takes care of internal affairs, why would it be strange?” Michael, ever the good soldier, did not seem eager to question the chain of command – one of the reasons why Mercurius liked him so much as the seat Sieben holder.

“What about _Polizei_?” Lotus waved his hand to make his point. “Gestapo should not be stretching its resources to dealing with everyday miscreants and hoodlums.”

Mercurius had to hold back a snort. As he suspected, Lotus was far more insightful than his appearance would have let people think – then again, the boy had been schooled properly, and with being the elder son and reluctant heir presumptive to the executioner-in-chief Johann Reichhart, he’d know very well how the chain of responsibility worked for which crimes.

It likely wasn’t even something that was taught in the Reichhart household, but simply something the boy picked by osmosis.

Any further musings were interrupted by the opening of the doors and steady click-clack of the military-issue boots. Ah, Reinhard must’ve wrapped things up with Bey and Schreiber. Standing up, Mercurius turned around and fixed his most genial smile on his face as we walked up to his friend. Time to start the wheel spinning.

“Karl,” Reinhard intoned flatly, looking none too pleased with how Mercurius disappeared on him, and the said man chuckled. Ah, always so possessive of what he perceived as his, his dear beastly friend. Some damage control would not be amiss before he introduced Machina and Zarathustra.

“Ah, forgive me, my dear friend. ‘Tis been boredom of the foreknowledge that led me astray and from your side.”

At the mention of their mutual hated thing, Reinhard’s eyes flashed gold once again, before settling into their birth icy azures – but Mercurius knew he had been forgiven for the slight, and smiled softly at the man. It was as impossible for the Beast to remain angry at the Serpent as it was for Serpent to be angry at the Beast.

“I see.” The other man’s gaze wandered to the tense pair sitting not far from them. “You’ve found yourself company to relieve you of that boredom, I presume?”

“But of course not,” Mercurius laughed, shaking his head. Jealousy painted such an ugly hue over his companion’s perfect golden aura – not surprising at this point in time, his friend was still unsure whether Mercurius preferred the claws and fangs over the Beast himself. “They did manage to present an interesting dilemma, I must admit.”

“Dilemma? To you, Karl?”

 _Who are you trying to fool here, me or them?_ Was the implicit question, and Mercurius stepped aside to let Reinhard see Machina and Zarathustra clearly for the first time. Judging by the subtle intake of breath and narrowed eyes, Mercurius knew he’d struck a chord with the man.

“I see now,” Reinhard nodded briefly before striding up to Zarathustra and Machina.

 _Let us look over the first act of tonight’s Grand Guignol_ , Mercurius thought with not a small bit of satisfaction. _May the curtains rise and the actors dazzle us, my dear Goddess._

* * *

  
As far as the general rules went, Lotus Reichhart was not an easily spooked man.

It came with the territory of being an executioner’s son from an entire family of executioners and butchers: he’d seen ugly and terrible and disgusting things many humans never would outside war, and he made his peace with them a long time ago. However, just because he had made peace with them, it didn’t mean he didn’t retain his senses for them, and the two men standing in the middle of the church were setting all of them off. The one who looked uncomfortably like him was the worse out of the two: so pale and washed out, Lotus had at first thought he was speaking with the living dead. In fact, he had been ready to attack until he saw the spark of liveliness in the man’s eyes as he spoke to Michael, something that his asshole of a father drummed into him as a way of checking if a person was truly alive or not, and decided that while all his danger alarms for this man were blaring, at least he wasn’t of the undead variant of danger.

The second one… oh, the second one he knew exactly why the alarms were ringing for. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, Gestapo’s commander-in-chief and the man Fuhrer himself stated was of iron heart. Like called to like, and the executioner in Lotus’ blood sang at the sight of another butcher of humans, eager to compare the notes and to lord over him the fact he had likely killed far more men than Reinhard had at his tender age of nearly eighteen. Lotus pushed down the urge and focused more on Michael, who progressively resembled the fresh plaster more and more as he watched the unknown man talk intimately with Heydrich.

“We’re in trouble,” Michael’s voice shook, and Lotus gripped his friend’s wrist to calm him down. “We’re so fucked, what is our luck, _Gott im Himmel_ Lotus, _we ran into fucking Gestapo and their dogs -_ ”

“I doubt it, Michael,” Lotus inserted as much calm as he could in his voice, not allowing his friend’s terror influence him. “Heydrich’s friend only entered here on a chance, and didn’t ask any implicating questions – we should be completely fine.”

“But now they’ll ask our names, and we’ll be on their radar,” Michael sounded straight-up terrified, and Lotus could not blame him. Michael hinged a lot on his military career, and even the whisper of him being investigated by the Gestapo for _anything_ would be enough for the upper echelons to either completely halt or seriously slow down his ascent through the ranks. “I can’t get written up, Lotus!”

“I’ll make sure you don’t,” Lotus rashly promised him, but couldn’t find it in himself to regret it. If it meant getting his friend out of trouble, he’d even go back to his father and join the family business to pull all the strings. Johann had not become Reich’s favorite executioner for nothing, and before he rebelliously marched away Lotus had made quite a few acquaintances in the high circles to make things happen.

Michael looked at him with a grateful expression, but before he could open his mouth, Heydrich was upon them.

“Getlemen.”

“ _R-Reichsfuhrer_!” Michael saluted jerkily, Lotus following far more lazily and sloppily despite technically being the man’s subordinate. Then again, Lotus had taken up the post in the _Ahnenerbe_ exactly because he wanted to avoid all the pomp and infighting the normal army would bring; he hadn’t joined the military to make a career out of it, after all.

“At ease,” Heydrich commanded, ad Michael and Lotus both relaxed into the parade ‘at ease’ stance. “Your names?”

“ _Hauptstormfuhrer_ Michael Witmann,” Michael rattled off his title and name and added on the army number Lotus couldn’t be bothered to remember. He remembered names and titles, not numbers.

“Lotus Reichhart, junior member of _Ahnenerbe._ ”

“Interesting,” Heydrich’s mouth twitched at the corner. “I was unaware Army and _Ahnenerbe_ had any business together at present.”

Michael spluttered, completely taken aback, while Lotus sighed and took the reins of the conversation. Honestly, his friend could be so nervy at times, Lotus wondered how come he was so calm under fire.

“We’re not here on an official business, _Reichsfuhrer,_ ” Lotus explained. “But as old friends from the recruitment camp.”

“I see,” Heydrich’s face was impossible to read. “You said your name is Reichhart?”

Not this again. Lotus sighed, and nodded.

“Yes. Your and my family’s businesses coincide quite a bit, _Reichsfuhrer._ ”

“And yet you’ve chosen _Ahnenerbe_ ,” the tone was free of judgment, yet Lotus felt the need to defend himself – to explain – to make him understand -

“I’ve chosen to follow my own head and heart instead of trapping myself in life I would find no fulfillment in,” Lotus said it with as much sternness as he could – he did not want to discuss it anymore, and Heydrich was gracious enough to not press any further.

“Very well. Come with me, Reichhart, Wittmann – I have miscreants I need to transport for interrogation, and a member of _Ahnenerbe_ who got implicated in their business tonight, and my people will not be here quickly enough.”

“Member of – ah, Schwagerin,” Lotus made a face. She was his senior in the chain of command and obviously far more experienced with locating treasures, but oh boy was she annoying with her constant attention on him. “Did she flirt with the wrong person again?”

“Again?”

The unknown man joined them, falling in step with Heydrich as he asked the question with a smile on his face, and Lotus bristled slightly. He was unnatural in some way, and Lotus would find out what was wrong with him (apart from sharing face with Lotus, but he refused to think too deeply on it).

“The woman doesn’t know when to quit while she’s still ahead,” Lotus felt compelled to complain, since he was often the one sent out to pacify and clean things up in the wake of her missions. Michael had already heard the rant before, but this time he had more things to talk about. “It’s never just retrieval with her – she has to make a mess by either flirting, injuring or killing people, and then I and other junior members have go make excuses and clean things up.”

The last retrieval before this one – the one that had to get some kind of stone with petroglyphs on it – had nearly ended in _Ahnenerbe_ being banned from having any business in Iceland ever again if not for Lotus’ ability to sweet talk people into ignoring the obvious things, like dead bodies and pools of both fresh and dried blood all over the stone floor.

That blood had been a _bitch_ to scrub out, and it was only due to the few tricks from the family handbook that got rid of it completely in the short time that they had. Lotus had gotten so many complimentary beers that night, he couldn’t even regret the hangover of the next day.

He relayed the story as briefly as he could – he knew he didn’t have much time, and he wasn’t allowed to speak too much about the missions, but the unknown guy seemed to derive quite a bit of pleasure from listening to it.

“Those like her rarely do,” he chuckled, and Heydrich sent an icy glare at him.

“Karl, restrain yourself.”

“Forgive me my friend, I overstepped.”

Karl. Lotus tucked away the name, the familiar yet exasperated tone Heydrich used with the man – kind of similar to the tone Michael and Lotus used when the other did something irredeemably stupid or idiotic – and the utter unrepentance in Karl’s voice.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could’ve sworn he saw Heydrich’s and Karl’s shadows change into the shape of lion and a serpent, but with the second look revealing nothing strange, he continued following them as they secured the two surprisingly docile causes of the ruckus – Wilhelm Ehrenburg and Anna Schreiber, whose names Lotus had to charm out of them with all skills he had, and even then they shared them reluctantly – and set off for the Gestapo’s command building.

* * *

Anna Maria Schwagerin continued to curse the situation in her head as she was led into one of the many unused offices of Gestapo headquarters. The building was mostly empty, operating on skeleton crew who were mostly there as part of the regular shift schedule, and gave her so many hives.

No wonder; a bona fide _monster_ lived here and called it his base of operation, and the traces of his overwhelmingly blinding golden aura could be felt everywhere: clinging to the doorposts and handrails, filling the air in the corridors where he frequented and lazily wafting through less frequented ones, decorating walls and coating the furniture. Anna had to deliberately close off her sight so she wouldn’t end up either blind or with a splitting headache from the sheer _possessiveness_ radiating from every corner of this place. Reinhard Heydrich truly marked this as his territory, and no witch would be foolish enough to do anything here, not even someone as powerful as her.

“I don’t understand,” poor Father Trifa fretted as the blonde and chattier of the pair of female officers escorted them into the empty office room, decorated only with chairs. “What could’ve we done to garner such a reaction?”

Anna’s patience was not infinite though, and she snapped at the man.

“Don’t be an idiot, Father. We were witnesses to something we shouldn’t have seen.”

She’d worked for long enough with _Ahnenerbe_ to know what kind of procedure was reserved for the hapless witnesses – they were either bribed to hell and back with a light dose of blackmail, or simply… vanished into the dead of the night. Too bad she wasn’t going to let that happen to her – she was a witch, dammit, she’ll find a way to get out and not raise monster’s ire.

If she couldn’t do it, she would have no right to call herself a witch.

“At least you didn’t create that mess,” the blonde girl chirped, but Anna could read the nervousness in the hand she held over her sword. “And I don’t think _Reichsfuhrer_ will do away with _all_ of us.”

“Maybe he will do away with you, Kirscheisen, for slacking off on the duty,” the taller, darker-haired woman snapped as she also stepped in and ushered a woman with the Lebensborn patch on her dress into the room and closed the door. “I’d definitely thank him for removing my number one headache.”

“Eeep!” The blonde – Kirscheisen? That name was vaguely familiar from _Ahnenerbe_ files, but Anna couldn’t remember exactly why - yelped and rushed over to the woman. “Sorry, sorry Commander, please don’t leave me alooooone! I don’t wanna die just yet!”

“Shut up,” the woman groaned, but there was a note of fondness there – they must’ve known each other before they enlisted, Anna deduced as she watched the humorous by-play of the two guardians.

As a result, the tension in the room decreased slightly – it really shouldn’t have, in Anna’s opinion, but whatever. If everyone keeping their heads cool meant the monster would let them go, Anna was all for that plan.

A few minutes passed in the tense silence, with Father Trifa and Lebensborn woman playing with the edges of their sleeves and two army women guarding the door, before the Lebensborn woman spoke up.

“Maybe we should introduce ourselves, to pass time? I’m sure _Reichsfuhrer_ will be here soon, but the time will be passing much more easily if we talked a bit.”

“You and your ridiculous ideas, Brenner,” the dark-haired woman sniffed, nose up like she’d smelled something bad. “We’re not here to fraternize.”

“The passage of time will be a torture in on itself without said fraternization, Eleonore,” Brenner replied silkily, softly, and Anna was instantly wary of the woman. Brenner – Lisa Brenner, one of the most important women in Lebensborn? Uh-oh. This was turning out to be quite a shitshow, and that was _without_ factoring in the monsters in human skin. “And I doubt any of us had done anything untoward tonight except being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Agreed,” Father Trifa chimed in, looking relieved someone was taking active steps to make things easier. “It has become quite stuffy in here, if I have to say so.”

Stuffy? Anna smirked at the confirmation of her theory of the true identity of Father Trifa. So he truly had the gift of empathy? Poor man.

“Indeed,” Lisa Brenner nodded graciously at the man. “As I suggested the idea, I’ll be the first one. My name is Lisa Brenner, of Lebensborn.”

Bingo. Anna mentally congratulated herself and also noted the relationship between her and this Eleonore – there seemed to be not much love lost.

“Father Valeria Trifa,” Father bowed slightly.

“First Lieutenant Beatrice von Kirscheisen,” the blonde grinned as she introduced herself. “And this grump here is my commanding officer – yah!”

“Stop yapping, Kirscheisen,” the dark haired woman grumbled, having bonked her subordinate over the head. “Commander Eleonore von Wittenburg.”

“Anna Maria Schwagerin, senior member of _Ahnenerbe_ ,” Anna chirped as all eyes swiveled on her. “I was just finishing the job I had with Father Trifa when this whole thing happened.”

“ _Ahnenerbe?_ ” Eleonore raised an eyebrow, and Anna grinned manically at her. Was it her dress, or her behavior that offended the woman? Well, good. Anna was a witch, and she wasn’t here to play by the rules of human society, or their expectations of the women. “Then you’re the only one here that is directly subordinated to _Reichsfuhrer_.”

“Only tangentially,” Anna waved off the comment. Apparently the woman had enough of the tact not to insult Anna immediately like she did with Brenner. Then again, the two seemed to have a history… “Our reports do end up in front of _Reichsfuhrer_ eventually, but we usually have nothing to do with him.”

“Pity,” the other woman huffed, and Anna sympathized with her. If she had an in with the monster, she would’ve used it by now; that wasn’t going to happen though, so she had to resign herself to waiting. “Who was the other man with him?”

“I do believe it was Karl Krafft – I’ve seen him several times at _Herr_ Himmler’s office,” Brenner volunteered, and Anna felt her eyes widen. Karl Krafft, the man who predicted the assassination on the Fuhrer? She remembered only glancing at him, so dazzled by the golden monster of Reinhard Heydrich, and flinching away from the serpent-like gaze that promised an eternity of the nothingness.

The other monster was the man who could see future? No wonder Anna had been so afraid of him then; she could scry future to a certain degree, but she was far from _good_ at it. To be good at it, you had to be very powerful...

A knock interrupted any further conversation. The two soldiers tensed before Eleonore cracked open the door, hand on the sword.

“Who goes?”

“ _Hauptstormfuhrer_ Michael Wittmann, on behalf of _Reichsfuhrer,_ ” a male voice answered from the other side.

“Wittmann?” Eleonore looked slightly confused, but opened the door to let a hunk of a man inside. His broad shoulders and tall stature filled up the door, and his dark eyes swept over the room before landing on Kischeisen and Wittemburg. Anna also spotted a slighter shadow behind him, but could not determine their identity. “Sieg heil. _Hauptstormfuhrer_ Eleonore von Wittemburg.”

“Sieg heil, _Hauptstormfuhrer_ von Wittemburg,” Wittmann nodded. “ _Reichsfuhrer_ sent us here to wait – he’ll first interrogate those two hoodlums before debriefing all of us.”

Debriefing, not interrogating. Anna had been around military long enough to know the difference, and breathed a sigh of relief at the good news along with the rest of the room. They were not going to get disposed of – probably just sworn and blackmailed into silence, which was acceptable to Anna.

Then she noticed the shadow lurking behind Wittmann come closer, entering the room after him, and she grinned in sadistic delight.

“He~llo there, Blood Lotus.”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Schwagerin, I’m not in the mood for your games,” Lotus Reichhart snapped, blue-green eyes blazing as he crossed his arm and glared at her, ignoring the rest of the room. “What have you done now, and do I need to bring out my notebook?”

“Awh, Blood Lotus is not ready to play with the adults tonight,” Anna cooed at the boy’s petulance, but at the same time she flinched internally at the menacing orange-blue aura he projected. “No need to glare like that, I did nothing but walk in on a scene I shouldn’t have, like the rest of us.”

“Bullshit,” Lotus snorted, but the aura dimmed slightly, not cooling the room anymore. “Well, whatever. I’m only here to finish the mission, so…”

He outstretched his arm, palm up and expectant. Anna grinned maliciously at him.

“And what makes you think I’ll hand it over to you?”


	2. Justice no more (Only Hanged Man)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beatrice bears a witness to an exchange between two people who know a bit more than everyone else and is completely confused; Reinhard muses on Lotus' existence, and Michael makes a 'death' choice for the first time in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title refers to the Tarot cards - no need to look them up, I explained their meaning in the chapter - but they roughly follow the tarot cards given to characters canonically by Takashi Masada.
> 
> Also, Michael and Lotus keep torpedoeing my outline and remaking it to their whims. Boys, don't you know how to _chill_?

Beatrice did not expect her Christmas night to end up spent in one of the unused offices of Gestapo, covering away from the willowy man and scantily clad woman as they tried to kill each other by the glares alone, but there she was.

“Commander,” she whispered, feeling genuinely afraid for the second time today as she gripped her sword until she could swear her hand bones would break out through the skin, her uniform uncomfortably tight.

“I know,” Eleonore whispered back, dark eyes fixed on the newcomer as he furiously stared Anna Maria down. Blood Lotus, she called him, and Beatrice could almost see it; the lotus flower, used to charm and send unsuspecting into the world of eternal dreams, dripping with killing intent and blood. “Don’t remove your eyes from them.”

Beatrice hummed in reply, and the man behind them – Michael Wittmann – huffed quietly, surprising the duo slightly.

“She shouldn’t have provoked him,” he rumbled in a surprisingly smooth and quiet voice for a man his size. “Lotus is already on the edge because of Heydrich and Krafft.”

Lotus was such a strange name, but like Beatrice said before, it suited the man perfectly.

“You will give it to me, unless you want to explain to _Reichsfuhrer_ why that capsule is with you when he questions you.”

Lotus’ voice was pure ice – no room for negotiations or sweet talking – but Anna Maria laughed airily, supremely unconcerned with the threat.

“I have nothing to hide from the _Reichsfuhrer_ – all the reports end up in front of him, don’t they? He’ll understand.”

“So you want it officially known that you were considered suspicious enough on a _retrieval_ mission at home for Gestapo to flag you down for inspection, no matter how baseless?” Lotus was relentless in his attacks, and Beatrice shuddered. She wouldn’t want Gestapo investigating her in any capacity or for any reason on her file, and it must’ve been even worse for those who engaged in more secretive business of the Third Reich – they’d effectively lose the trust, the job, and be disgraced in the eyes of everyone.

Anna Maria made a face, obviously reaching the same conclusion, and raised a pointer finger up in an universal ‘give me a moment’ gesture; after Lotus nodded and took a step back, crossing his arms over the chest, she closed her eyes, clasped her hands as if in a prayer -

“Are you _crazy_ , woman!”

Lotus rushed forward and forcefully ripped Anna’s hands apart from her prayer pose, and Beatrice took an unconscious step forward. Was he seriously assaulting a woman?! If he was -!

“Are you actually crazy enough _to let that man sense you?!_ ”

There was no killing intent in Lotus’ voice though; there was only terror, and from what little she could see of his face, Beatrice could easily discern utter horror on it. Safe to say, he was rough with Anna, but he meant no intentional harm to her, and so she relaxed a tiny bit from her attack state. Eleonore did not follow her: she was still tense, as was Michael Wittmann.

“What are you talking about, Blood Lotus?” Anna asked, sounding slightly shaken as she stared at Lotus’ hands encasing her wrists.

“If you think _Heydrich_ is the worse between the two of them, you’re dead wrong!” For the first time, the name was uttered out loud in the room without any honorifics, and Beatrice noticed room temperature drop several degrees. “He may be the executioner, but that friend of his… I can’t pinpoint him, Schwagerin. _I have absolutely no idea what he is._ Do you understand?”

It was not Anna Maria that reacted first to Lotus’ puzzling words, but Michael. He cursed loudly and creatively, drawing attention to himself.

“Lotus, why in the deepest pits of Hell did you not tell me when we accepted this?”

“Because he knew I knew something was wrong,” Lotus shook his head. “Didn’t you notice? He was watching us both, but he was watching _me specifically_. _Please_ be careful around Krafft, Schwagerin, and all of you. He’s… I’ve never met someone like him before, and I’ve met a lot of crazy types.”

Beatrice was teetering between surprise and confusion. What was this guy talking about? He spoke about… sixth sense? Those things were notoriously unreliable, barely more than glorified intuition and paranoia – but Michael and Anna Maria seemed to believe Lotus on his word, looking as pale as ghosts as Anna Maria hurriedly thrust the richly decorated box she dug out of her dress’ cleavage into Lotus’ waiting hands. Beatrice blushed slightly, but Lotus didn’t react at all – maybe he’d seen her do it before?

“Take it then, and get it the hell out of here,” Anna was a far cry from the woman who engaged in a war of glares and contempt with Lotus; now she more resembled a scared child as she huddled, as if trying to ward off chill only she could sense. “I hate owing you for this, Blood Lotus.”

“Didn’t ask for it, you know,” Lotus hid the box in the folds of his sloppily done uniform. Under normal circumstances, Beatrice knew Eleonore would drag the guy over hot coals for such carelessness and show of bad image, but even she seemed completely taken aback by the nonsensical conversation Anna Maria and Lotus had. “Get out of here alive and sane, Schwagerin, and I’ll write it off our mutual debt list.”

“Deal. Drinks on me?” Anna offered, and Lotus snorted.

“I hope you’ve saved up on the money, because Michael can _drink_.”

“I bet I can drink both of you under the table,” the playfulness returned to Anna’s voice, and Lotus rolled his eyes.

“Your grave by hangover, Schwagerin. Everyone, good luck with those two.”

Lotus directed the words at the mostly silent room up until now, and Beatrice felt a sudden urge to speak up, to say something, _anything,_ that’ll stop him from leaving before -

Before what?

“What about you?” Lisa Brenner asked, tilting her head slightly and doing all of Beatrice’s work for her. “Are you not also going to be debriefed with us?”

“Yeah, but _Reichsfuhrer_ allowed me to go and finish my business before I get back here,” Lotus shrugged, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll come back when I’m done.”

However, before the man could open the door himself, they were opened from the other side; a pale, willowy man with dark hair, slate grey eyes and nondescript black clothes was standing there, almost melting into the shadows and the background as he wore a small smile.

Truly, the only thing that made him stand out from the gray walls of the buildings was the yellow bow he used to keep his strangely long hair under control and the face…

… the same face Lotus had.

It took all of Beatrice’s considerable self-control not to blurt out the most logical question in that situation.

_Were those two related?_

“… _Herr_ Krafft,” Lotus stiffly greeted the other, shoulders rigid and drawn up practically up to his ears. Was he… scared of that man? Why? He didn’t seem too threatening to Beatrice; more than a little odd with his apparel, but not scary.

Also, Krafft? _That_ Karl Krafft? The man who was rumored to have predicted Fuhrer’s assassination? Maybe Lotus was scared of his own future told – not everyone wanted to know what awaited them, Beatrice knew, and she could understand that.

( _It wouldn’t be until much, much later that she would understand why Lotus Reichhart was so hostile towards Gold and Silver – and both commend and curse him for being able to keep his mouth shut_ _about the whole thing_ _._ )

“Lotus Reichhart,” Karl Krafft greeted Lotus jovially, as if they were old acquaintances. “Finished with your errands?”

“Only starting, actually,” in response, Lotus fished out a set of huge keys from his jacket pocket, ignoring a slight choke from Michael. “Parish will not be happy if I don’t close the church properly, so I’d better go.”

“Do come back speedily – I doubt my friend will be in a forgiving mood if he is forced to wait overly long,” Krafft nodded and stepped aside to let Lotus pass by freely. “And do strive to keep mind clean, hmm? Confusion makes for a rather poor friend in decision-making, I’ve found.”

Wow, the guy really liked to hear himself talk. Beatrice had _never_ heard someone use that sort of ornate language in casual situations outside romance novels, and she was born in a wealthy, socialite family!

“… I will do my utmost.” Lotus looked none too happy.

“Then let us meet soon, under the light of Gold.”

The parting remark apparently struck a chord with the younger of the two, who gaped at the still serenely smiling man before shaking his head and rushing off.

What had that been all about?

* * *

  
Reinhard Heydrich could not suppress the yawn of boredom.

After dealing with Wilhelm and Wolfgang – he very clearly stated he would only use the boy’s birth name, and the maddened dog quickly complied, likely sensing just how close Reinhard was to crushing him – he had very little patience left over to deal with the hapless witnesses of today’s mess. Everything he did was ringing of _foreknowledge_ – he had done this before, in the exact same way, under the exact same circumstances – and while he knew these men and women were _his_ once and again and for all eternity, going through the motions truly bored him.

No wonder Karl had wandered off during his little clash; he couldn’t grasp how his friend had not gone insane from this ghetto, having been aware of it since he was born. Or maybe he had, but simply learned how to deal with it without breaking apart completely.

Speaking of wandering man…

That boy, Lotus Reichhart. He had stirred his heart in a way only Karl had managed to do so far; something about him spoke of eternity, ever-expanding universe of a singular wish that clashed against Reinhard’s wish. He was his in a way Karl was his and yet not; he was his in the way other witnesses were and yet not. It was difficult for Reinhard to pinpoint exactly _wh_ _o_ and _what_ Lotus Reichhart was to him, and that uncertainty, that vagueness brought him immense excitement. Was he truly lucky enough to find someone who could help him break through this accursed ghetto of foreknowledge early? Lotus Reichhart may not have been fully aware of his own position, but if his subconscious knew of this phenomena that chained Karl and him down and was already on the path of breaking through it…

Well, let it not be said Reinhard let treasures slip through his fingers.

“My dear beastly friend,” Karl slipped into his office, bringing with him a dash of perfume – woman’s perfume, the one he has felt from Anna Maria Schwagerin. So, the witch was the first one? Interesting choice. Then again, Karl had warned him that those more perceptive of the arcane were going to be harder to sway to his side. No matter – the woman was his, one of his Claws and Fangs, and Reinhard would have her persuaded one way or another. “What has drawn your attention so far from here and now?”

“The boy, Reichhart,” Reinhard smiled, feeling no true joy. While the answer to the questions about him eluded him, he was still quite familiar – not truly the unknown he was seeking. “He’s… vague. Known yet unknown.”

“Paradox inside paradox, loop inside loop, one born into this world yet already one step outside of it,” Karl agreed with him, sounding both perturbed and delighted. “Truly my friend, it seems the chains of the foreknowledge aren’t fully tying him down – or, maybe, they’re chaining him down so fully he cannot be distinguished from the chains themselves. It is quite unsettling to look at for the extended period of time, is it not?”

“Jealousy suits you ill, Karl,” Reinhard chuckled, shaking his head. Karl was in many ways an enigma to him, but in this he was certain. “He either will prove himself worthy of our attention or he will not. He’s both mine and not mine – we will meet under auspicious stars one way or another, of that I’m sure. No need to think too much on it right now.”

“Indeed,” Karl nodded and waved his hand, opening the door. “You may come in, _Frau_ Schwagerin.”

The witch sashayed in, the ridiculously provocative dress swishing around as she perched herself into the seat across Reinhard’s desk. Reichhart had not been exaggerating in the slightest when he called her ‘man-eating trouble maker that doesn’t know when to quit’ – Reinhard could all but see the recklessness only the true self-assurance in their own temporary immortality could foster, as well as the aura she put up to lure the unsuspecting men into doing whatever she wanted them to do. A true witch indeed; some rumors swirling about her that had reached his ears before spoke how she basically ran _Ahnenerbe_ all by herself with how influence she had over the Director, and Reinhard couldn’t help but snort to himself with one corner of his mouth lifted up.

His fellow men were truly weak on that front, weren’t they?

“ _Reichsfuhrer,_ ” the woman smiled airily, carefully concealing her fear. Good, she wasn’t stupid nor naive enough to think she could just walk in and out of here without at least some sort of deal. Reinhard had very little patience for the stupid people. “I hear I need to be debriefed about tonight’s… incident.”

She said the last word delicately, likely trying to completely divest herself and her mission from what had happened. Too bad this was not what Reinhard _really_ wanted to talk about, but he kept up the charade for a little bit longer. Wouldn’t do to have his reputation as thorough man questioned.

“Indeed. I would like your account of your evening,” Reinhard projected his ‘tell me all you know’ aura into his voice that never failed before - in retrospect, it must’ve been the byproduct of his powers Karl had made him aware of, but it still felt a little bit strange to use it consciously. “Anything might be useful.”

Schwagerin quickly launched into a retelling of the evening after receiving permission to speak freely in front of Karl, describing a normal routine of clocking out of the work, leaving behind a note for others in the office about the package she’d be picking up at the nearest Eastern Orthodox Church, preparing for the job at home (here Reinhard squinted slightly at the revealing dress, only then spotting the barest hints of the weapons she had taken for ‘just in case’ scenario), going to the church, taking the package off the priest that was also waiting for debriefing, charming him into taking a small walk with her down to Postdamer… and the rest was history.

There was nothing in the story that would suggest Anna Maria Schwagerin was anything but ordinary, if highly accomplished, member of _Deut_ _s_ _ches Ahnenerbe_ , and before-Karl Reinhard would’ve found no fault in her story. At the first glance, she truly was an innocent bystander, only caught up in the whole thing by proxy of being at the wrong place at the wrong time… but Reinhard knew she was lying on one thing.

Namely, why she had stuck around the fight and only tried to run away after he had shown his true strength. Sneaky, slippery witch, indeed. Too bad he already had her right where he wanted her.

“Before we go any further, could I trouble you for a card draw, _Frau_ Schwagerin?” Karl soundlessly appeared at Reinhard’s side, a thin set of cards in his hand.

“ _Herr_ Krafft?” The witch blinked, eyes narrowing as she wavered between accepting the draw and rejecting it. She had been slightly on guard against Karl before, but now she seemed even more distrustful of him. Was this some sort of rivalry going on between magic users?

“Ah, don’t mind me, I offer it to everyone I meet,” Karl smiled serenely, extending the fanned-out cards. Reinhard knew it was a blatant lie – he had only offered it to him, Wilhelm and Wolfgang so far as a way of sealing the pact – but refrained from calling him out on it. “I like knowing people’s futures, you see. Major Arcana only, of course.”

“Major Arcana, huh?” Schwagerin looked carefully at the man, then at the cards, and finally extended her hand and picked out a card.

_So it is, so it shall be. I, Reinhard Heydrich, offer you a contract,_ pulsed through Reinhard’s veins as  Anna inspected the card. He had no idea what kind of magic Karl had woven into those cards, but it was absolute – those that accepted the card from the magician were permanently bound to the Golden Beast. Now, the only thing left was the spoken word of acceptance,  vow of fealty, and Reinhard will have one of his Fangs and Claws as his once again.

“Death,” she murmured, tracing out the number and the imagery of the black-clad man with a red, white and black banner riding through the bloody battlefield. “I like it. Suits me nicely.”

“I’m sure you are aware of its classical meaning?” Karl posed it as half-question, half-statement, and Anna Maria Schwagerin, one of the last truly powerful magic users, grinned with all her teeth.

“Eternal change. _Omnia mutantur –_ the only permanence is the change. Good card to appear to you, at least right side up.”

“Indeed,” Karl nodded, collecting the card. “But, at this point, are you truly that change? Do you really think you’re doing everything you can to _be who you can be_?”

The siren call of mercury and gold wove its web around her, and Reinhard relaxed. She was already defeated. So easy. So predictable.

So boring.

He knew what she would say next, and he sighed mentally in the anticipation of the next person Karl would bring to him.

Three down, seven more to go.

* * *

  
Michael was never a brave one.

Now, don’t misunderstand him – he can be brave under the gun. When shit hit s the fan and everything is falling apart around him, the world was always in sharp, clear focus; every movement could be the life or death, and somehow, Michael always knew how to pick the ‘life’ option, no matter the circumstances or the number of various choices presented.

He could not choose ‘death’, no matter how hard he tried.

At least, that’s how he felt like sometimes. If he was cardinally late to the train and had to go the alternate route through the unsavory parts of town in the dead of the night, he’d somehow find the route where nothing ever happened,  even if the murder was happening just a street over. If he had to pick a spot on a random on the map for the reconnaissance, he’d pick a spot where a lot could be learned and minimal danger was involved.

It was tiresome.

One would think him insane, but Michael wanted to struggle, to prove he was strong, to prove it wasn’t all just Lady Luck taking care of him because she picked him as her favorite for some arcane reason. He sometimes craved that one final ending – that one final mistake – that’d end him. He wasn’t suicidal, of course, he just wanted something to go  _wrong_ . He wanted the struggle of catching up, the pressure of failure – that was why he joined the Army, after all. That was why he desperately wanted to rise up in the ranks – higher up you were, more likely you were to make a major mistake that’ d cost him his life.

No one understood that part of him – no one, that is, except Lotus.

_Michael had met his comrade-in-arms at the recruitment camp, just as Lotus was enlisting. Michael had been wandering aimlessly around the site, bored of the restocking paper for the enlisting officers he had gotten, when he was nearly mowed down by the furious whirlwind of a petite, delicate-faced boy as he stormed out of the office._

“ _\- heaven’s sake, should’ve just forged my papers, why did I even think – sorry, sorry!”_

_Michael stumbled back with a loud ‘oof’ – the petite boy was both heavier and stronger than he looked, and somehow, Michael lost in that collision. Had the boy been any heavier or stronger, Michael would’ve stumbled two more steps back and impaled himself on one of the anti-personnel traps, the ones that looked like tiny crosses with one of the four spikes bent so it would pierce the foot._

_Had the situation been ever so slightly altered, Michael would be in danger of dying._

_A surge of both fear and elation made him feel brave enough to talk with the boy who had nearly caused him severe injuries._

“ _It’s okay, man. Wish you pushed me a bit stronger – then I’d’ve actually fallen on one of those assholes,” Michael casually waved his hand over the traps._

_The boy stopped, eyes wide and bewildered as he took Michael in properly, from the top to the bottom. Michael took his own time to inspect him: blueish-dark hair, dark blue eyes, clothes that looked high-quality but weren’t perfectly tailored, the pendant hanging on the neck, an executioner’s ring on -_

_Wait. Executioner’s ring?_

_Michael was rather familiar with the sight – he used to live in a town where one family produced generations of executioners – but how come he immediately knew the ring to be an executioner’s? After he and his family moved, he had never seen any other executioners…_

_Oh._

“ _You’re a Reichhart,” Michael deduced with a gulp. Now the boy’s mutterings made a lot more sense – yeah, he probably should’ve forged the documents or taken another place for the enlistment. This one would never let him through – something about how only proper people could be in the Army, and not kids with pedigree and cushy jobs waiting for them._

“ _What the -?” The boy gaped at him. “How the fuck do you know that?”_

“ _That ring,” Michael pointed at the innocuous ring. “I lived close to the courthouse as a child, and often Saw Herr Xaver Reichhart with it.”_

“ _Great-uncle?” the boy blinked, and then sighed, outstretching his arm. “I see. Lotus Reichhart. Sorry for running into you.”_

“ _Michael Wittmann,” Michael accepted the extended hand. “And if you’re going to be sorry, be sorry for not actually causing me any damage.”_

“ _You suicidal or something?” Lotus raised an eyebrow, and wow Michael did not expect that sort of judging look from someone younger than him. “’Cos I can’t help you in that department. Father is already looking for any reason to kill, and I’m not helping anyone get there if I can.”_

“ _Not suicidal,” Michael shook his head, letting go of Lotus’ hand. “Just want to make a mistake that could cost me my life – I can’t seem to do it.”_

“… _well, I’ve always been told I have a nose for finding deadly trouble,” Lotus grinned unexpectedly, eyes sparkling, and Michael’s heart skipped a beat at the sight – it was like watching something that was a complete opposite to you, but held no repulsion because of its nature. “I get it. A curse you just can’t get rid of, right?”_

_Michael nodded, happy that someone could understand._

Sitting in front of the golden-haired head of Gestapo and his shadowy Lotus-lookalike friend, Michael found another two beings who shared the same feeling – or, rather, they felt almost like Lotus felt to him when they first met, so he freely assumed they shared a similar curse to his own.

They made his heart skip a beat, and yet…

“Karl’s tricks are nothing but harmless swindlery in this regard,” Reinhard Heydrich waved Michael’s concerned gaze as Karl Krafft produced a small pack of cards. “He merely likes to read people in his own ways. Do indulge him.”

Michael wavered. Lotus had warned him and everyone else that it was not the Gold that they had to fear, but its shadowy companion… but what harm could come from a tarot card? Magic wasn’t real anyway, so nothing was going to happen even if he accepted the card, right?

Michael dearly wished Lotus was here – he always had a better optics of the dangerous situations – but he got held up somewhere, so he’d have to trust his own curse and make a choice.

_Let it be death, let it be death…_

Michael tugged on the fanned cards. Instead of pulling only one card, though, he managed to pull out two: one that remained between his fingers, and one that fell on the table between Krafft, Heydrich and him, face up and showing a woman sitting on a throne, holding a set of scales in one hand and a sharp blade in the other, number ‘11’ emblazoned on it.

“Justice no longer, hm?” Karl Krafft hummed, sounding slightly surprised, and Michael looked up towards him at the same time as Reinhard Heydrich before flipping over the card that had remained in his hand. “But a Hanged Man… what an interesting card. A man, faced with terrible choices, made peace with his future, no matter how bad things could become. You’re an interesting person, Michael Wittmann.”

“How so?” escaped Michael’s mouth without his permission. Something about the way Karl Krafft was speaking was urging him to flee – something that had a decidedly Lotus-like voice to it – but Michael tamped down the urge and continued listening.

“Justice always makes decisions swiftly,” Krafft explained, folding the cards back into the deck. “Hanged Man, on the other hand, takes his time. They may make the same decision, but the way they get to it is vastly different. Have you experienced that? The fact that time slowed down for you to make a crucial decision?”

Michael couldn’t say _yes_ to that question… but oh, how wished that would be the case. Taking time, instead of making it under duress – maybe then he’d be able to pick a ‘death’ choice then.

“Then, why don’t you join us?” Reinhard Heydrich posed the question idly, as if reading Michael’s thoughts from his face. “Your loyalty, in exchange for the fulfillment of your one wish?”

Michael gulped. _I’m sorry, Lotus._

“Very well.”

“Then repeat after me,” Karl Krafft’s voice dropped down into a hypnotic, almost-dreamlike register. “I, Michael Wittmann -”

“I, Michael Wittmann,” Michael repeated on automatic, all alarms ringing. Yes, he was making a death choice. _Finally._

“ - swear to follow Reinhard Heydrich completely and absolutely -”

“Swear to follow Reinhard Heydrich completely and absolutely.”

“- in exchange for fulfillment of my sincerest wish -”

“In exchange for fulfillment of my sincerest wish.”

“- for as long as he needs me.”

“For as long as needs me.”

“My loyalty is my honor.”

“My loyalty is my honor,” Michael breathed, and he could almost feel the pact being sealed with those words. Indeed, his loyalty was to be his honor, and nothing was to sully that honor – no act of disloyalty was to be tolerated.

“Then welcome, Michael Wittmann,” Reinhard Heydrich smiled softly, and Michael couldn’t help but fall slightly in love with that smile – the smile that promised everything Michael could ever want. “May your help be invaluable and your craving fulfilled.”

Michael nodded, rising up and walking to the door, feeling like he was stepping on the clouds. Before he opened the door and let himself out, he stopped for a moment. The alarms had subsided slightly, but the voice of his good friend made a reappearance in his head, reminding him of a teeny tiny fact.

_What about Lotus?_

“Will you… will you bring in Lotus as well?”

“Hmm…” Reinhard hummed behind him, sounding deep in thought. “He will have to make a choice by himself. However, if you are asking if the offer will be made to him as well, never fear – we would be highly remiss to let such a man slip through without at least trying to keep him close.”

Michael breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you. May I be dismissed?”

“You may. _Gute Nacht._ ”

“ _Gute Nacht_ ,” Michael replied, exiting the office and finding himself face to face with irate Lotus.

“What,” the younger of the two spoke through gritted teeth, “did you _do_?”


	3. Knowing too much (is a curse)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valeria Trifa finally socializes a bit with others, plans for drinking in pubs are solidified, and Mercurius is doing a lot of heavylifting (read: blackmailing), all under the gaze of the Golden Beast.

Valeria Trifa could not stop shaking after he exited from the Gestapo building.

He was the man of the cloth, someone people implicitly trusted with their secrets and fears; he was also a talented empath, capable of easing people’s minds and hearts without problem. He had thought that, short of seeing His Lord in person, nothing could truly surprise him – and here those two were, breaking all of his expectations.

How could humanity give birth to two of those things, whatever they were? They… he couldn’t hear them at all, not even when he dared to let loose of his control and actually _try_ to hear their emotions; the only thing he got out of it was a golden wall of utter and all-consuming love and a laughing black hole of nothingness as the shadowy, inhuman-feeling Karl Krafft easily batted away his probes and warned never to do such a thing again.

 _Extremely rude, to go and deliberately pick for secrets when it’s outside your job description,_ Krafft tutted at him, thoroughly paralyzing the priest. _Do wait for an order to do so – you never know when someone will be able to counter it, and what would you do then?_

Valeria had folded like a piece of wet paper after that – easily swearing his loyalty away to the everlasting golden wall of love. Hadn’t that boy with strangely mercurial eyes said that Gold was the lesser of the nightmares between the two anyway?

But still…

He could not stop thinking about the whole issue as he walked back to his church -

“Oooh, Father Trifa!” Anna Schwagerin waved at him from a little father down the road and decidedly out of his way to the church, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Come over here!”

Beatrice von Kircheisen and Eleonore von Wittenburg, who had gone on before him, were standing slightly behind the _Ahnenerbe_ member, and Valeria had no need for his gift to know how they were feeling. Their faces after all had the same look his own probably had – utter awe, blinding love, maddening infatuation.

It was very, very hard not to kneel in front of Reinhard Heydrich and adore him, after all.

“Come here! Let’s wait for the rest, hmm?” Anna was grinning, but there was also that mad glimmer in her eyes. She was one of them, just as infatuated as the rest. “I do owe Blood Lotus and his bodyguard drinks for that save, you know, and I hate owing that brat anything, even if he’s useful.”

“Speaking of which,” Beatrice interrupted, her blonde locks swaying to and fro as she looked between Anna and Valeria. “What was that all about, back in the room? I was totally confused.”

“That’s because you’re a dumbass,” Eleonore muttered, heaving an exasperated sigh at her subordinate. Beatrice pouted at the slightly hurtful words, and Valeria was hit with a surprising wave of something he could only call ‘simple-mindedness’, even if it was a bit of a misnomer.

In other words, the girl before him had very few emotions, and she wore them all on her sleeve. How interesting. Valeria earmarked her for the later – she would be a good person to be near when he inevitably got overwhelmed.

“It’s not like you know anything more about it either, Commander.”

“Oh, curious, baby girl?” Anna smirked, wiggling her fingers at the young soldier. “Sorry, can’t tell you that without Blood Lotus saying yes – the brat has a little too many of my secrets for me to tattle on him without his permission. He can be quite vicious, you know – quite worthy of his family name, even if he goes out of his name to deny it.”

“Reichhart… the head executioner?” Eleonore narrowed her eyes, making the same connection Valeria had made after Krafft so casually dropped the name before. “That one must have some guts to go against that man – he’s quite an unpleasant sort, that Johann Reichhart.”

“Personal experience?” Valeria couldn’t help but sympathize with the woman – he could only imagine how it would feel to be near an executioner for him if even someone who was relatively insensitive to anything removed from the ordinary proclaimed the man to be unpleasant.

A grimace on the normally stoic face would’ve been enough of an answer even without the verbal confirmation from her visibly disgusted subordinate, who mimed puking before speaking.

“That man is seriously out of his mind – all he talks about is the ways of killing as many people as possible within limited time. Is he trying to become a Grim Reaper all on his own, or what? Not to mention, he did it during a _gala_ – how the hell is one supposed to enjoy dancing and food after dealing with that?”

“Eeew,” Anna screwed her nose up. “And here I though pretty lotus flower was exaggerating when he said the man talked about business at the dinner table at their home. Guess I owe him another one for that.”

Beatrice looked visibly green, and even Eleonore paled, shaken by the words. Valeria had to tamp down the urge to vomit on his part as well – no wonder the boy ran away!

“You have someone else you owe things, Schwagerin?”

The object of their conversation appeared seemingly out of nowhere, the huge pile of keys missing and his hands stuffed into the pockets of her pants as he tilted his head. In the light of the street lamps and the full moon hanging over them, his dark hair took on a blueish hue, finally giving him a feature that wouldn’t get him easily labeled as Karl Krafft’s relative (which was still an unsettling thought). He looked at them with undisguised curiosity before frowning slightly.

“He’s working fast, that man. Honestly, what’s even his … oh well, I guess I’ll figure it out on the go, as usual.”

More nonsense out of him – or was it nonsense, everything considered? A bad feeling assaulted Valeria Trifa. This boy… there was something _off_ about him, something that almost reminded him of Karl Krafft and to a degree of Reinhard Heydrich. It wasn’t a pure, blinding wall of golden-hued love, or a laughing black hole of nothingness, but… it was similar. Nowhere near as _formed_ as theirs, but it was there, the ever-expanding misty hue of airy blue, freezing everything in its place until nothing could move.

“Of course not darling, you’re my one and only,” Anna batted her eyelashes at the boy, who only responded with an eyeroll. “I only realized that I owe you food on top of the drinks.”

“Oh? What for this time?” Lotus accepted the proclamation and played along.

“Not believing you one the whole ‘business talk at the dinner table’ thing you mentioned,” Anna pouted. “Now I owe you and your bodyguard food as well. What a bother.”

“What are you even – wait,” Lotus narrowed his eyes. “The table thing? That’s the one thing you never believed me on from the start. What’s with the sudden change of opinion?”

“Eeh,” Anna dawdled, caught by her own words, and Valeria could feel her reluctance to rat out everyone for being the gossips.

Eleonore had no such compunctions, though.

“The subject of your father came up in the conversation, and my unfortunate first meeting with him at the gala.”

At least she had the decency to dance around the fact they actually started discussing the son first before switching onto father and his particular sins. Small mercies.

“The last one? Oh, I heard all about it – my condolences for suffering through that,” Lotus made an aborted motion with his hand, and Valeria peeked, unable to hold his curiosity: apparently he wanted to pat the woman on the shoulder, but thought better of it at the last moment. “Father has an unfortunate tendency to hyperfocus on things he likes, and, well.”

There was no need to finish that sentence: everyone in the audience could do it for themselves.

“Though I shouldn’t be throwing stones,” Lotus continued in the middle of the stony silence, voice light and slightly self-deprecating as he tried to lift the mood. “I share that same predisposition.”

“No need to brag,” Anna blithely added, and Valeria couldn’t help but admire them all – they were all so brave with their words and emotions. In some ways, they were rude – but it was exactly because of that rudeness that eh could trust them not to feel something else from what they’re saying. “Mister _I always do all my paperwork on time_.”

“Paperwork is not _fun_ ,” Lotus rolled his eyes as Beatrice choked on her breath and Eleonore snorted. “It’s just sensible to do it on time, Miss _Boss is always on my case for delaying my paperwork._ ”

It devolved into a game of sniping and playful jabs between the two _Ahnenerbe_ members from there, with Eleonore and Beatrice occasionally inserting themselves but otherwise content with simply watching and listening, just like Valeria did.

“What’s happening here?”

The fair Lisa Brenner joined in, coming up to Valeria and standing there to spectate. She was shivering slightly due to the ungodly cold temperatures, and Valeria briefly regretted not having a jacket over his cassock to give it to her. Eyes wandering, he spotted a small pub that was still open, and opened his mouth to interrupt the conversation for the first time.

“It’s quite cold, isn’t it?”

The eyes swerved to him, and he gulped, but pushed on. Now was the time to be brave.

“I’m certain _Frau_ Brenner will feel a lot better inside a warm establishment than out here at the mercy of wind.”

Lisa’s eyes widened, radiating surprise and gratitude, while Eleonore huffed but otherwise did nothing to deny it. After all, out of all of them, she was the one with least amount of layers – Anna had picked up a military jacket somewhere to throw over her revealing dress, likely the courtesy of either Krafft or Heydrich, Valeria had his layers hidden in the cassock, and the rest had military jackets as part of their uniforms on.

“I don’t mind,” Beatrice shrugged and ducked under Eleonore’s swipe. “Could use a warm drink.”

“No drinking on duty,” the senior officer reprimanded her half-heartedly.

“Not on duty right now anyway,” Beatrice replied with a cheeky grin, blonde ponytail swaying.

“Wait, does this mean Michael is now in for debriefing?” Lotus’ eyes narrowed as he looked at Lisa, who merely shrugged, and power-walked out of the place. “Then I’ll have to leave you – I’ve got an idiot to pick up and do my debrief as well. See you.”

“Come back quick, Blood Lotus!” Anna called after his rapidly retreating figure, which only got her a middle finger.

Valeria shook his head and followed the rag-tag group into the pub, sure that the wait will not be overly long.

* * *

  
Mercurius need not have been the creator of this universe to be able to hear the argument happening in front of the Golden Beast’s door – Zarathustra and Machina were simply that loud – and shook his head. His son’s past incarnation continued to surprise him, and he was hard pressed not to feel elated about it, despite his misgivings.

“Interesting pair,” Reinhard hummed, tapping his hand on the polished door of his office desk, clear of all clutter. “They surprised you back in the church, Karl. How so?”

The implied question about the supremacy of foreknowledge was easy to read, and Mercurius chuckled.

“The paths never diverge in my experience – minor interruptions and anomalies here and there, but I don’t recall ever having met them under this set of circumstances. It’s still under the purview of foreknowledge, yes, but it’s very unfamiliar.”

“Hence your comment of ‘Justice no longer’,” the Golden Beast said lazily, the deduction all too obvious. “The things rhyme, but they don’t match perfectly, is what you’re trying to say.”

“Exactly,” Mercurius nodded as the plans unfolded in his mind, convoluted spirals slowly straightening out as he daintly picked at them, discarding and keeping them. “Balance will have to fall on both of them this time, instead on just one.”

“Balance?” The azure eyes narrowed at the phrasing, before relaxing as the Beast lounged in his chair. “Justice is the scale-keeper, is it not? With the way they revolve around each other, they have to act as the set in perfect resonance.”

“Quite so,” and that, more than anything, troubled Mercurius. In all his plans, there could only be one person filling in the necessary roles at any given time, and Lotus’ presence this early on could destroy the possibility of the creation of Shambhala, which would force Mercurius to alter the paths too much.

“Quite troublesome, that connection they have,” Reinhard murmured, seeing the same problem as Mercurius. “They’ll either have to learn how to act as each other’s perfect substitute, or one will have to be discarded in favor of the other, is what you’re saying.”

“Indeed,” the Serpent nodded. “You already know which _I_ would prefer, my dear friend, do you not?”

“That I do,” the Beast smirked. “However, I disagree on this issue with you, Karl. I have a feeling about the boy, and I would like to examine it more closely. Your preference would rob me of that chance.”

“Far be it from me to bar you from trying to break the chains early,” Mercurius shook his head; his friend was currently not seeing the bigger picture. His own fault, really – he did not have the time to explain the Ewigkeit and its uses in full to his friend, and it was coming back to bite him – but he had to roll with it. “I do urge you to think things thoroughly on this matter, though.”

“Of course,” Reinhard nodded, and Mercurius flicked his wrist to open the door – a child’s play, more of a show-off move than anything, but for some reason his beastly friend adored those little things, the little ways Mercurius defied the logic and reason of the world, so he continued to indulge.

Zarathustra and Machina instantly halted their argument, the pair’s eyes fixing onto the Golden Beast and his casual expression as he tilted his head. Zarathustra took a deep breath before looking once again at Machina.

“We’ll talk more later, okay? The others are at that small pub down the street, you know which one – you can wait for me there. Schwagerin is covering the tab for us.”

“The entirety of our tab?” Machina raised an eyebrow, and the Serpent recalled how the man could both eat and drink.

“The entirety,” Zarathustra’s mouth twitched in an approximation of an impish smile. “I’ll have to buy Wittenburg a thank-you gift for that.”

“What makes you think the woman will even accept it? She has her reputation for a reason,” Machina warned him, and Mercurius had to hold back a chuckle. Yes, Samiel Zentaur was an interesting one in that regard.

Zarathustra waved it off, and what came out next shattered Mercurius’ self-restraint. His son, indeed!

“I only have to butter up Kircheisen to tell me what she’ll actually like, and, well, it does pay off to have a face like mine sometimes.”

Machina snorted loudly enough to cover Mercurius’ cackle, although he could spot his dear friend chuckling as well at the words.

“Her blade on your head. See you soon.”

“She wouldn’t kill me with her blade, she’d just throw me in front of enemy fire,” was Zarathustra’s scarily accurate remark thrown at Machina’s back before he entered the office and closed the door. “Apologies, _Reichsfuhrer_. Michael and I often lose the track of time and sense of decorum when we’re together.”

“Apology accepted,” the Golden Beast graciously nodded and gestured for the boy to sit down. “It brought me quite a comedy relief, so I cannot say I’m overly angry at the loss of decorum.”

Zarathustra bowed his head wordlessly, likely sensing it was better not to push despite the Beast’s genial and forgiving mood.

“With that being said,” here Mercurius’ dear friend narrowed his eyes at the child, eyes finally going back to how they should be – molten gold – which instantly made Zarathustra stiffen up. “How much are you willing to do for him?”

“Excuse me?” The boy blinked, visibly shocked. “I thought this was a debrief -”

“I think we can both discard with that farce,” Reinhard surprised Mercurius with how direct and blunt he was being. “You and your friend are not related at all – at best, you’re proxy witnesses to the incident tonight and therefore useless in that regard. What I’m more interested is your connection to Michael Wittmann and that curse he talked about.”

“Curse – oh,” Zarathustra’s eyes iced over as Mercurius felt the boy’s own craving for the ephemeral moment, unrefined and not fully formed as it was, pushing away both his and Reinhard’s influences away. “That’s why I’m here?”

 _Beautiful,_ Mercurius thought in awe and terror. It was like seeing Marguerite and Reinhard again, but on a much dimmer scale due to how little formation there was.

The Golden Beast refused to reply, waiting for Zarathustra to open his cards – which he did in the next moment, looking rather disgruntled.

“I can sort of negate his curse – no idea how, but when he’s with me, his choices become more deadly, which runs contrary to his curse of always picking ‘stay alive’ options under high pressure.”

That was a surprisingly apt description of curse mechanics for someone so completely unaware of the existence of Ewigkeit or how it worked – Machina’s curse indeed involved making all choices as life-saving, but the condition was that they had to be split-second ones. In other words, he couldn’t have any _time_ to think his options through, and Zarathustra’s craving made exactly that happen – time around him would slow down, which nullified the curse’s condition for activation.

“Would be nice if someone could also negate my curse,” Zarathustra continued, which made Mercurius snap to attention. “I mean, always being drawn to the biggest danger around and being aware of its specifics is no walk in the park.”

He fixed his gaze, surprisingly enough, on Mercurius instead of on Reinhard.

“Ho?” The Golden Beast was now truly and well hooked, and Mercurius could all but hear his plans regarding the boy’s death shatter. Time for a new one, it seemed like. “So you see it too?”

“That stupid looping pool of quicksilver void that constantly seems to be hissing at me? I see it alright, oh Death King of Gold,” Zarathustra crossed his arms as he sarcastically spat out the words. “What even are you two? Humans are definitely not it.”

That was… an image. Mercurius had never met someone so clear-sighted, not even back in the olden ages – not even the cursed Kassandra was this good of a seer through the veil of immortality – and he couldn’t help himself.

“Beautiful!”

“Indeed,” Reinhard Heydrich’s smile was glittering gold as the space _filled up_ with the overwhelming love of the Golden Beast, under which Zarathustra grunted, eyes going cross for a moment before blazing blue, the craving inside him desperately trying to shield itself from being consumed by the more developed Hegemony. “You see things clearly, do you not?”

“Too clearly,” was the strained reply.

“Then why don’t you join me to get rid of it?”

“Hell no,” came a quick reply as the boy composed himself. “I don’t need to get rid of it – it’s useful.”

Oho? A tingle of the unknown crept into the conversation, stealing Mercurius’ breath. Something was about to happen – something that could start the toppling of the world of foreknowledge if handled properly – and he laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder, signaling his wish to take reins of the conversation.

Reinhard gazed up at him in shock – he too must’ve noticed it – and allowed it.

“Then, would you join us to make good use of it?” Mercurius offered in a sing-song voice. “You negate curses – why not help others like your dear friend?”

Zarathustra’s eyes widened at the words.

“There are others?” he murmured in a nearly inaudible voice. Mercurius did not reply, but he did not need to – the boy was still unaware of Marguerite’s existence, and until then, there was no need to make him aware exactly how his craving worked.

After all, it would be up to him to make it a Transcendence or a Hegemony – it’d be better for Mercurius to not meddle there any further.

The thread of unknown solidified with that decision -

“Okay. I’m in.”

\- and Mercurius let out an honest laughter of jubilation.

“Then welcome!” _Welcome to the stage, my dearest son, and dance ever so beautifully for my Goddess. Give me the unknown I so long for!_

“Indeed,” the Golden Beast’s aura flared even stronger, resonating with Zarathustra’s craving and Serpent’s joy. “Welcome, Lotus Reichhart. May your help prove invaluable.”

* * *

Wilhelm Ehrenburg hissed as he tended to his ribs under the distrustful gaze of the Gestapo guards, but he couldn’t give less of a damn about it.

He had been given a first-aid med kit during his conversation with that smarmy bastard Krafft and Heydrich, and instructed to take care of himself – apparently, while Heydrich was willing enough to let him go in the morning, he was not feeling gracious enough to summon any sort of doctor or a nurse in the middle of the night on Christmas to actually patch him up. This suited Wilhelm just fine, though: he landed himself in this mess, and his pride demanded he fix himself out of it without relying on anyone else.

Damn it, though – how could he have misread the situation so badly? Sure, the brat he picked a fight with was a nasty one, someone who shared the hospitality of the cloak of night with Wilhelm and aroused his senses, but to first misread that woman and then get into a fight which he couldn’t win…

That was completely unlike him.

He hissed again at the thought of the blond-haired woman; she shouldn’t have been any sort of an opponent, just an army brat with a nice sword at her side, but she was _reading_ him the entire fight! He, the true ancestor, the phoenix of the night, getting read by a slip of a woman – at first he called her a girl, but no, that didn’t fit the fire in her eyes and grace of her movements – and countered move for move? Impossible! Sure, she didn’t have rat’s chance in hell of actually _beating_ him, but even the possibility of losing to someone that seemed so utterly ordinary at first glance…

“Tch,” Wilhelm tsked as he pulled the bandages around his ribs needlessly tight, relishing in the burn and aches it brought him, reminding of all the bruises and cuts she gave him. “What a fine woman, that one.”

He didn’t know the first thing about love, or adoration, or marriage, or any of that sappy bullshit the world living in the sun’s light seemed so obsessed about; what he did know well, however, were lust and possessiveness and desperation, and oh how much did he long for this woman’s attention. He wanted her only to think of him: to fear him, to hate him, to be ready to go to fight with him at any moment… the longing was both so alien and so familiar, Wilhelm could almost choke on it. He wanted her to obsess over him like he obsessed over her; he wanted her to be _his first_ in every way he could make her. Sex and kill he gave away to Helga, that bitch, but the first meaningful kill, first kill of someone who actually came close to defeating him… yeah, she’d make a fine trophy.

It may have been a sick, twisted version of a boy longing for their chosen one’s attention, but Wilhelm found nothing odd with his warped set of thinking: he was not of the sun world, therefore nothing he did that was strange to that world was to be treated as unnatural. After all, night was the opposite of the day – it would be only natural for those who are of the night to develop habits and behaviors that clashed utterly with those of the sun.

Well, whatever. She had also run into the golden creature in human form – there was no way their paths wouldn’t cross at some point, and sooner or later, Wilhelm knew it with utter certainty – they would clash again. A predator never let go of its prey, and just because the first bout went to the prey, it made the critical error or thinking that a win of a battle was the win of the entire war.

Speaking of the Golden One…

He shuddered at the very thought of the man, dabbing the medical alcohol on one of the cuts the blonde woman had given him with a little more force than necessary, ignoring the burning that followed. That man… he was just so _large,_ there was no other word for it. He was a ridiculously good fighter – not something Wilhelm had expected from a child of a musician and chair-general, but hey, he grew up in the same time as Wilhelm, who knows what kind of dirty things he had to do to keep himself alive – but it was more than that. There was something that seemed utterly alien on him: something that transcended the concepts of normal humanity, some kind of feeling that Wilhelm knew but could not put a proper name on.

Was it boredom? It manifested as such, sure, but it lacked some of the most telltale signs of it; there was no condescension, no casual intimidation tactics, no sense of pride. If anything, Wilhelm would describe it as a boredom borne out of useless knowledge – it gave the person a sense of boredom with everyday things, but the person was so acutely aware of how useless the knowledge was, they felt absolutely no need to flaunt it for everyone to see. Frankly, it was terrifying and more than little awe-inspiring, seeing the man just look at everything like nothing could ever surprise him – it really made Wilhelm desperate want to do something that’d surprise the man at least a little bit.

“Is that so, _Herr_ Ehrenburg??”

“What the fuck -!” Wilhelm swore and jumped in his seat, the bottle of medical alcohol nearly spilling everywhere around him and on his newly tied bandages.

The creepy fucker Krafft – or, well, Mercurius, as he apparently was more partial to – was smiling at him serenely from the other side of the bars, looking like he had no fucking care in the word, flouncing around and being a freak while simultaneously passing all checks normal humans had.

It creeped Wilhelm out so fucking much.

“Now, now, there is no need for such a dramatic reaction in this place, _Herr_ Ehrenbug,” Mercurius placidly waved away all of Wilhelm’s curses and jitters. “The stage here is poor indeed, wouldn’t you say?”

“Say whatever the fuck you’re here to say and get out,” Wilhelm hissed, more insults building up at the back of throat and at the tip of his tongue, but his instincts told him that would be a supremely unwise idea, so he held back.

“Ah, the man of a few words? I must say, _Herr_ Ehrenburg, that of many men that I have met with a disposition similar to yours, I’ve yet to find one whole company is not utterly boorish,” Mercurius’ never-fading grin and cheerful voice said one thing, but Wilhelm wasn’t addled or stupid enough not recognize when he was being insulted.

“Say that again -”

“Settle down,” the amusement grew even sharper, and for a wild second Wilhelm struggled to _breathe_ – it was like an enormous pressure enveloped him in a cocoon, pressing at his lungs, intestines, head, to the point where Wilhelm thought all of his internal organs might liquefy and spill out – but it was gone the next moment, leaving Wilhelm overwhelmed and questioning his own sanity for the first time in his life.

After a few moments of silence, as if to mock the other’s state of sanity, Mercurius continued in a deceptively smooth voice, slow and pointed, as if he was explaining things to a child.

“You have sworn to repay your debt to my dear friend in exchange of erasure of your record, have you not? However, he has very little use for those who freeload off of others, much less those who do not take their oaths seriously.”

The implication was loud and clear – if he wanted the debt to truly be considered settled, Wilhelm would have to become useful to Gestapo and its chief commander.

“Fine, I’ve no problem with that,” Wilhelm spat out after a long pause. “But I don’t know all that much – not like I went to school or any such shit. Don’t know what I can do to help the chief of Gestapo with, aside from maybe disposing of the trash.”

Trash here meaning in both literal and figurative way – killing was no stranger to Wilhelm, and getting paid for it wasn’t below him.

“Ah, there is no need to concern yourself with that line of thought,” Mercurius shrugged, and Wilhelm grimaced – if he hadn’t hated the man on the principle for setting off his ‘freak’ alarms, he’d definitely hate him for his stupid way of long-winded speak. “My dear friend always had jobs he’d like settled within the more dark and shady places in Germany and beyond that normal officers cannot thread without fear of exposing themselves.”

While this was an obvious dig at his preferred way of living, what Wilhelm chose to focus more on was the way he addressed Heydrich – ‘my dear friend’. Not once during the interview cum interrogation beforehand, or during this conversation, had Mercurius referred to the chief of Gestapo as anything other than ‘dear friend’, ‘my dear friend’, or on one occasion, ‘my beastly companion’. Normally Wilhelm would peg that sort of speech tick as a way for a lower-ranking person or a weakling to brag about their connection to someone much stronger, and indeed during interview Wilhelm had branded Mercurius as such.

Now though, with how much of an enigma the man was and how clear of ‘danger’ reading he was getting when Heydrich wasn’t around… he might have to reconsider.

Fuck, was everyone he met tonight going to have to be reclassified in his head? Wilhelm dearly hoped it not to be the case. He still had that little score to settle with that blonde woman, after all, no matter how fine she was.

He’d first have to learn her name, though… now there was one upside to working for the glorified counterintelligence office – he’d easily find her name. What happened afterward, well… if she ever ran afoul of him or of Heydrich, Wilhelm would be the first to volunteer to deal with her.

Like he said, he had a score to settle with her, and Wilhelm Ehrenburg was nothing if not patient when the situation called for it. Every predator had to be, after all, and he wished to be vampire, the most evolved of them all.


	4. The path of magic is never smooth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleonore regrets a bit, Anna complains about Gestapo and nearly gets caught, and Beatrice just knows Krafft is a shit teacher she's going to hate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a goof. I kept misspelling Beatrice's surname, and now I feel like an idiot. Correcting that ASAP! Also, the chapter word count kind of ran away and did its own thing...? Sowwy!  
> On the side note: this is where my headcanon about how LDO obtained and trained to handle their Ahnenerbe completely kicks in (although still taking cues from the canon).

There was no other way of describing the situation but with one word: chaos.

Eleonore von Wittenburg grimaced as she took a generous gulp of her beer and surveyed the rapidly deteriorating scene in the surprisingly nice pub (at first she had thought they’d enter a literal hole in the wall – it turned out to be only a hole in the wall in a figurative sense, with good food and drinks to the boot, despite the rowdy patrons).

Father Valeria Trifa was already drunk, swaying to and fro as he randomly spouted ridiculous nonsense from time to time, being attended to by Lisa Brenner who, if the rapid twitch of her left eyebrow was anything to go by, was quickly losing her patience with the man of the cloth. Served her right for picking that man to hang out with; then again, Lisa was always good at attracting the useless pieces of humanity that masqueraded as men, so it wasn’t like Eleonore could begrudge her her irritation.

Beatrice was also drunk-flushed, but unlike Valeria she had enough sense to also order food and a glass of water midway through their waiting for Reichhart to come back, and was attacking it with gusto as she held a cheerful discussion about her family heirlooms with Anna Schwagerin who, to her credit, only showed her inebriation by the slightly glazed look in her eyes as the two debated what type of blade would collect the most resentful energy around it, and for what reasons. Last Eleonore heard, Beatrice was firmly in the ‘senseless deaths caused for no reason’ school of thought, while Anna camped in the ‘death granted in the throes of vigorous battles’ school.

That led her to the only peaceful – or at least, semi-peaceful – corner of the establishment the people that met for the first time tonight occupied: the corner she and Michael Wittmann were the sole occupants of until Lotus Reichhart joined them and ordered a truly astonishing amount of beer for both of them, ignoring Schwagerin’s theatrical groans.

Eleonore watched the two men as they drank in silence, one beer after the other, and monitored them for any signs of escalation – her senses screamed at her that there was something brewing between the two. Finally, Reichhart laid down the fourth mug of the night down, only halfway full, looked at Wittmann with tired eyes, and opened his mouth.

“You’re a fucking fool, you know that?”

“Hardly something you can criticize me on, considering you did the same thing,” Wittmann replied dryly, also putting down his unfinished fourth beer mug, and stabbing the _bratwurst_ on his plate with a little more force than necessary.

“I know, I know, but couldn’t you have _waited_ for me?” Lotus exhaled noisily, sounding completely exasperated. “I had to confront those two while they were super interested in knowing all about you… I hate how Krafft cornered me into agreeing to this whole mess.”

“You do not wish to work with _Reichsfuhrer_ , Reichhart?” Eleonore intruded into the conversation, eyeing the two with suspicion. She could understand to a certain degree Wittmann’s reluctance to join Gestapo – the police and military duties did not mesh well together – but why was Reichhart, the member of _Deutches Ahnenerbe_ and basically a subordinate of Heydrich by proxy so unwilling?

“No,” came a swift and decisive answer, which made Eleonore take a mental step back. Well, at least he was completely honest. “He scares the shit out of me, and the company he keeps is even worse of a nightmare than him. At least with him I know I’m willingly coming to keep a ravenous lion company.”

“I know what you mean,” Wittmann grumbled. “He sets me off just by speaking in that weird, convoluted way of his. So pretentious and unnecessary.”

“Amen to that,” Eleonore raised her mug in toast to that truth, and the other two responded in similar manner, taking a nice swing of their beers. “Then again, he claims to be a magician and prophet of some sort, and we all know magic is not real; he has to sell his lies somehow, I suppose.”

“The problem is, the man’s not actually lying,” Reichhart bit his lip. “He doesn’t read as a liar – manipulator, by all heavens yes, but not an outright liar, so there has to be something to his so-called powers.”

“You believe in magic?” Eleonore couldn’t hold back a derisive snort. Magic, in this day and age, after so many science discoveries and technological advancements? Give her a break.

“Not in the wand-waving, spell-chanting sort of way,” Reichhart shrugged, playing with his own _bratwurst_. “But in the… well, do you believe in curses, Commander Wittenburg? Or maybe hauntings?”

That gave Eleonore a pause. Curses, most certainly not. Hauntings, on the other hand…

“I have seen apparitions,” she reluctantly confessed, ready to defend herself in case either of the man tried to ridicule her or demean her as ‘scaredy-cat’. “My family manor is apparently full of them, but I’ve only ever seen one of them.”

“Good,” Reichhart’s lips lifted up in a tiny smile. “Think of me as paranormal detector, then – anything dangerous, weird, or plain unexplaineable, I can sense it and tell its nature. It’s sort of my curse, actually: because of that built-in sensor I have in my head, I always run into danger.”

“Because your sensor acknowledges the anomaly’s existence, the anomaly becomes drawn to you,” Eleonore breathed, suddenly everything around her too quiet despite the noise levels not having reduced in the slightest. It was the basic rule of hauntings, one that her parents taught her when she was still a child: if you do not give them any attention, they will not bother you.

“Bingo,” Reichhart nodded, the shadows underneath his eyes in stark contrast with the dim gaslight lighting in the pub and adding onto the sense of general tiredness exuding from him. “It’s basically a joke in _Ahnenerbe_ that if you need to sniff out a weird artifact, you either send a witch,” with those words he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at Schwagerin, “or a living weirdness detector.”

He moved the thumb to his own chest.

“That’s why you warned us not to trust Krafft,” it all clicked for Eleonore. “Because you couldn’t place him?”

“It may be worse than that,” Reichhart sighed, and pulled out a tarot card out of his jacket pocket. “The bastard must’ve slipped me this while we were saying goodbyes – now I can’t leave even if I wanted to.”

“Tarot… card…” Eleonore leaned backwards, suddenly barreled over by the implication. She’d accepted a tarot card herself from the Krafft while spellbound by Heydrich – had she unknowingly struck a deal with the devil while she was not paying attention?

“Yeah. As far as I can tell, it’s a form of a contract – no idea what kind of contract or who’s it connected to, but it has Krafft’s fingers all over it,” Reichhart laid it down in the middle of the table. “The joke’s on him, though – this card just proves my point.”

The card on the table was card with golden number ‘16’ emblazoned on the top right corner, depicting a tower being struck by lightning and falling apart.

“Number sixteen of Major Arcana – Tower, omen of disaster yet to come,” Reichhart explained with flat voice. “Like I need any more proof that I’m a walking disaster magnet.”

“So you know tarot,” Eleonore gulped, remembering her own card – number 14, Temperance. Oh, she’d made such a mistake – by only watching Heydrich and trusting him on his word, she had run into the very trap she had been warned of.

“Sure,” Reichhart shrugged. “ _Ahnenerbe_ deals in so many occult things, astrology, numerology, tarot and such are basically our bread and butter. I don’t personally believe in future being easily predicted by cards or star alignment, but I can definitely tell if some charlatan is trying to extort my money.”

“So, if you got the card of Temperance…”

“Temperance? Depends,” Reichhart looked at her inquisitively. “Right side up, it’s a good card to have – means you easily balance between heart and mind, body and soul, instincts and logic. Upside down, though, it becomes a warning of overindulgence, of fundamental imbalance you have to deal with unless you want your life to start going haywire.”

“And Hanged Man?” Wittmann, who’d been silent for a while to let Eleonore speak with Reichhart without interruption, spoke up.

“Oh, that’s…” Reichhart blinked, taking a moment to remember. “That’s an interesting card. Hanged Man represents being put in front of difficult decisions. Right side up, you’ve finally made peace with all outcomes, upside down, you’re a nervous wreck and should probably take a step back and think things through again.”

Wittmann nodded, glaring at the card of Tower – ultimate symbol of Reichhart’s bond to Krafft – on the table between them as if he wanted to incinerate it, and Eleonore couldn’t help but feel the same.

* * *

If Anna had a fear of things changing a lot after meeting the two beasts, she was utterly terrified of the fact nothing seemed to change all that much in the following two months.

Unlike those military folk, she and Lotus had been permitted to stay within the fold of _Ahnenerbe,_ still researching the old relics and testing them for any sort of mystical powers. Most were complete bogus, of course, but a select few that were the real deals – like the blood of Vlad the Impaler Anna had collected the night she met the monsters – were quietly stashed away on Heydrich’s orders for the purpose Anna was yet unaware of and scrubbed from the records.

The current project she was wrestling with was obtaining the diary of Elisabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess of Hungary. The rumors about the thing being cursed and influencing all their holders to commit the killings in vein of the said countess tickled Anna’s fancy – she would shamelessly admit to admiring the woman’s work – and if proven correct, Anna would gain an object with a curse on it she could both play with and learn more about.

Double jackpot, in her opinion.

“Schwagerin?”

Lotus leaned through the cracked-open door of her office, a pile of folders, papers and books in his arms measuring at least twenty centimeters in height. While the change seemed to have avoided Anna, Lotus got promoted to the status of a senior agent and got his first assignment, which forced the two to share the office due to the sheer lack of space in the building. Anna was not happy at first, but the boy was surprisingly cooperative within shared space, only occasionally pissing Anna off with sarcastic quips and bantering. Plus, he always made good coffee for the long hours they spent in the office, so everything could be forgiven.

“Finally moved from the square one?” Anna teased him but stood up to help him transfer all the documents on the other desk in the room.

“Bah, more like ran into more potential dead ends,” Lotus huffed, handing her the first load and going back to the door to pick another heap of files. “I swear, every single person in Europe had seen Robespierre’s guillotine or knows someone who held it at one point or another. This is all the trails I managed to get after I eliminated the obvious impossibilities.”

Anna raised her eyebrow at the words, but she could sympathize – during her search for the Impaler’s blood, she’d faced the similar mountain of trails that ultimately led her nowhere.

“Anyway, how’s the diary going on?” Lotus sat down and started organizing the files, separating them for the inspection. The desk was chock-full of papers, but the boy had managed to clear enough space for his notebook and files to be opened.

“Wonderful!” Anna sing-sang in the falsetto, and Lotus snorted.

“That bad, huh?”

The two exchanged a look of mutual sympathy.

“The trail of people who had it is ridiculous,” Anna grumbled, returning to her seat and annotating the key points of one of the only non-sketchy reports she was reading though. It looked like a bust to her, but she’ll have to investigate it anyway. “It makes absolutely zero sense, timeline wise. I’ll need to go to Hungary to actually investigate.”

“No,” Lotus moaned, opening his own notebook to take his own notes. “There’s no way they’ll let you go right now, you know that.”

It had been just yesterday that Gestapo had halted all field investigations due to the suspicion of one of the people in charge of managing the field operations had turned traitor and started leaking things to other side. Personally, Anna couldn’t understand why Gestapo was so tense about it, but apparently Himmler thought something the man knew was dangerous enough to be leaked and ordered his arrest.

“I know,” Anna nodded sulkily. “Being stuck behind the desk sucks. How am I supposed to continue the research if I’m constantly sitting here in Berlin?”

“I know,” Lotus sighed, closing the file and dropping it carelessly at the floor – must’ve been completely useless. “Have you heard why they arrested him? The real reason, I mean, not this bullshit they seem to be pushing?”

“Oh, the rumors?” Anna hummed, nodding. “I have. Something about a black book of the officers and the location they met?”

“Yeah, that,” Lotus tore out a page out of his notebook, scribbled something down and gave it to Anna. “I’ve heard that he was inducted into some sort of a secret society, but then decided to break away. Of course, just a rumor, nothing concrete.”

_Secret society meeting in a castle out there in woods_ , it was written in thick, calligraphic ink, and Anna shuddered as she traced the letters.  _Heydrich and Himmler are members – not a rumor._

Now it all made sense – if the high-ranking officers were actually in cahoots and formed some sort of secret society and someone decided to squeal… yes, it all now made sense. The reason why Gestapo arrested the guy, why Himmler was so nervous, why _Ahnenerbe_ had to temporarily stop their field investigations – it all added up.

However, Anna’s curiosity had just been ignited. Secret societies had been around for a long time, of course, and Anna had infiltrated quite a few of them in her unnaturally long life span, but she never lost her interest in them. They were just so cute and fascinating – thinking that they had some sort of monopoly over secrets, or that they were especially enlightened… it made her laugh all the time.

She’d met a few mages and warlocks that way, in fact – although, if memory served her right, the only one still alive was that Crowley guy in England – who often manipulated those societies. Just like her, they were often interested in them, and Anna guessed they got off on the power of leading idiots around by the nose. A bit crude, in her opinion, but Anna could not blame them – there was precious little that could amuse people like her and them.

Part of the reason why she enjoyed hanging around Lotus and annoying him so much was exactly because she found him interesting; it wasn’t often that you would find humans so sensitive to the supernatural for no apparent reason, and therefore she didn’t feel the need to mess around with normal folk.

“I see,” Anna finally hummed, tearing the paper to shreds and carefully feeding each and every scrap to the flame she manifested in her hand, making sure not even ashes remained. “Such nonsense, right?”

“Absolute nonsense,” Lotus masterfully ignored the display of the supernatural and returned to the annotation, the scritch-scratching of the fountain pen loud in the sudden quiet of the office. “Our officers are far too sensible to go frolic around and dabble in something so dubious, right?”

“Hey, don’t insult the beliefs of others,” Anna twirled her fountain pen in her hand. “Who knows, you might one day abandon standard faith.”

“I’m already pretty much agnostic in practice if not entirely in declaration, to be frank,” Lotus shrugged, not breaking his wrist-breaking speed of writing. “I personally don’t have anything against occult and mysteries, but sincerely worshiping it sounds like a bit of reach, wouldn’t you say?”

Anna shrugged, conceding the point. The decline of the magics in the world had indeed come to the point it wasn’t even worth setting up ways to worship it, that much was true, and any and all attempts to revive it to the old glory would likely be completely useless. Still, it was difficult for Anna to marry the words and actions of a boy who was, up until that fateful meeting at Christmas last year, the biggest anomaly she’d ever met. How could one see all he had seen, and still brazenly say things like that?

Wait.

She was an idiot. They were being watched, weren’t they? Gestapo officers were crawling all over the place – they were not safe in the slightest, and Anna was not about to owe the Golden Beast any more debts. Lotus was definitely being the smarter one here, keeping an air of someone totally clueless if slightly interested in gossip.

Sighing, Anna returned to the reports and started cross-referencing timelines to narrow down what and where she’d pay more attention when the traveling ban for _Ahnenerbe_ members would be lifted. She also had that secret society for investigation if she ever became too bored… but better not to dig too deeply on that front, at least not yet.

As she stated before, she had no intention of placing herself within the Golden Beast’s scope needlessly.

* * *

  
The card that led them here arrived in an inconspicuous envelope, plain white without heaviness the more expensive paper had – a perfect cover for the hard, embossed and clearly meticulously designed and personalized invitation card to a club Beatrice had never even heard of. Then again, it wasn’t as if she was familiar with Berlin’s underground or secret clubs – because there was absolutely no way the club she was currently standing in front of could be completely legal and hosted things in complete compliance with law. No normal club had bouncers in the front door you had to show the card to, which was hidden in an alleyway, and was located inside private property walled up to high heavens.

“‘Gentleman’s club’, huh?” Eleonore snorted as she pushed the door open and descended down the narrow staircase. “They might as well say it’s a brothel out loud with how suspicious it is.”

“Well, it could be, you know… a club for people with other inclinations,” Beatrice lowered her voice, blushing slightly. She knew about such things only from the talks she’d overheard from other people, and while she didn’t find anything particularly wrong with it (artists adored physiques of both men and women in their art, why couldn’t people?) she knew what kind of stigma they faced.

Filthy. Dirty. Below human. Unnatural.

“It is possible,” Eleonore gave in, not looking too happy about the whole thing, but did not comment any further. Instead, she focused on getting herself and Beatrice into the actual club itself, which was quiet and completely void of people.

As promised in the invitation card, the entire club was silent for the night, the only people allowed in the members of the little gathering Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Krafft deemed suitable. A more vain and childish side of Beatrice rejoiced at the level of trust she had been shown, but a more cynical side was a little scared. She still recalled clearly her own terror when Heydrich pushed her out of the way, the haunted looks in Anna’s and Lotus’ eyes as they warned them of the Mercury and Gold, and the two months she had spent working with the Gestapo only solidified that impression.

Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Krafft were dangerous men, and nothing Beatrice could do would scratch them.

What was worse, her superior, Eleonore, seemed mildly infatuated with the golden monster – always eager to do whatever he told her to, looking for any and all excuses to find herself in his vicinity, and never actually giving Beatrice an explanation as to why she was behaving weirdly while at the same time denying she was infatuated with him.

Beatrice called bullshit. Her superior could dress that up as loyalty as much as she wanted to, but there was something else mixed in there, something that looked suspiciously like love – or at least adoration – to Beatrice. Well, hopefully this meeting would be enough to get them out completely from the monster’s influence.

The first thing Beatrice noticed when she entered the club was how eerie it was – only barely lit by the lights from behind the bar, with many plush sofas and iron chairs littering the edges and huge empty space in the middle, the atmosphere sent the chills up her spine.

Several of the chairs and sofa were already filled in: the crazy silver-haired boy, the one Beatrice remembered Eleonore facing off against until Reinhard got himself into the fray, was lounging in an iron chair like it was a throne near the farthest corner and to the left of the makeshift stage, playing with a knife. All other seats around him were empty; apparently no one else wanted to be near him, and Beatrice could relate.

Anna, Lotus and Michael were huddled in the group of the sofas right next to the bar, which were simultaneously closest to the only exit Beatrice could see and the only seats that faced the stage directly, making it both the best and worst place to be.

Father Trifa and Lisa Brenner were not there, but Beatrice knew already they also got the message due to Eleonore’s grumbling, so that would only leave the two hosts of tonight’s meeting and… that guy.

Beatrice’s shoulders stiffened as her blue eyes found the pale red of the man she had fought. He was leering at her, measuring her up and down like she was a piece of meat, and Beatrice’s hand twitched towards the blade she had refused to part with even after repeated reassurances from Heydrich the night would not end in violence. It was an instinctual reaction, and she was almost ashamed of it, until she saw a hungry, yet approving glint in the man’s eyes. Did he… get off of the danger? Was that it?

Beatrice could not be sure, because in that very moment Eleonore dragged her by the scruff of her uniform away from the pale man and closer to the insane boy.

“Do not start anything,” she muttered, also sounding a little on the edge. “They must’ve been invited as well.”

“I know, I can’t help it,” Beatrice grumbled as she plopped down into the iron-wrought chair across Eleonore, maneuvering it so she’d be partly sitting between the stage and her superior. That also meant she’d have to turn most of her back to the stage and the enemy here, but she felt her life on the line was a small price to pay for getting through this meeting sane and whole. “That guy looked at me like I was a piece of meat, or a prey to hunt down.”

Eleonore growled a little at that, shooting deadly looks at the man, but he paid her no mind, playing with a length of a chain. Opening of the door distracted them a little – not much though, knowing Lisa and Father Trifa were the only people left, assuming the two hosts were already there – but even that little was enough to make Beatrice relax a little bit. Lisa and Eleonore seemed to have some sort of strange rivalry she couldn’t quite get – something about their BDM days and incompatible ideals about womanhood – but Beatrice could count on them to be calm and level-headed about important things…

Things like this.

Appearing out of the shadows, Karl Krafft glided across the large empty space of the club and behind the bar counter, taking out several wine bottles and eleven glasses. Beatrice watched him the entire time as he poured the drinks, hyper aware she wasn’t the only one; it seemed no one in the room trusted the man with their drinks, for one reason or another.

“Thank you for coming today.”

Beatrice’s neck nearly creaked at how fast she shifted her gaze from one host to the other. Sitting on the makeshift stage in one of the iron chairs littering the club was Reinhard Heydrich in all of his golden haired and golden eyed glory, donning the normal SS officer uniform… with a golden lent on. Beatrice blinked at the strange addition to the regular uniform, but shook her head and continued paying close attention to the man. It was off-hours for everyone, and even Eleonore had taken out the most casual of clothes she could get away with that looked like an uniform just in case the emergency arose – why not the lent?

“Karl, the drinks?”

“Aye,” the dark-haired shadow of a man bowed his head, placing the glasses on a server’s tray and skillfully went around the room, handing them out. Beatrice took two for herself and Eleonore, noting Michael and Father Trifa had done the same, essentially playing the buffer for their partners. “We can start now, I believe.”

“Excellent,” the golden man nodded, taking his own glass but not taking a single sip. “I repeat, well met, everyone. I wished to have our first true meeting in a less tense atmosphere than what it was before.”

Considering that the last time everyone here had been in close proximity they all ended up in the Gestapo building… okay, Beatrice had to give it to him. This was one hell of a way to apologize for that night and everything that followed. Not enough, in her opinion, but a good start.

“Bah, like you can call that thing our first meeting,” the white-haired man sneered. “Not like we went around and introduced ourselves, did we?”

Well… he had a point. Beatrice still had no name for either him or the young boy hiding in the shadows.

“Your objection is noted, Wilhelm Ehrenburg,” Heydrich nodded magnanimously. “Hence my wish to remedy such a thing. I do wish for all of us to work together, after all.”

Work together to return the Fatherland back to its days of glory. That was the argument Heydrich used against Beatrice to get her to join this little crew of people with dubious sanity – if she joined, she could finally avenge Fatherland’s honor, help more people, and never be separated from her superior. Beatrice had no idea what kind of help she would be, or what it would be, but she definitely was desperate enough to have an ace up her sleeve in case things took a hard left.

“Everyone here came with their own sense of honor, their own sense of duty, their own most desperate desires and wishes they want to see fulfilled,” Krafft took over, his voice having a far less firm quality than Heydrich’s, and with his standard overload of words that Beatrice had gotten desensitized to. “If you truly wish it hard enough, if you believe it hard enough, you can make all your dreams come true… for a price of course, but it’s a minor one in the grand scale of things.”

Beatrice was fascinated despite herself. Being able to materialize their wishes in real world, for a small price? Something was off there – there had to be a catch, and Eleonore’s snort told her she also saw the same thing.

“I see some people here have little faith in my words,” Krafft smiled thinly, almost as if to mock their disbelief, “but I am certain at least one of us here knows how possible it is. What is magic but pure willpower and belief, after all – the willpower to change and belief you are enough to make the change happen?”

“Well, that is what most magics boil down to,” Anna muttered, looking slightly unhappy as Krafft focused his gaze on her, along with the majority of the room. Ah yes, she was the self-proclaimed witch. “I mean, there are power levels and restrictions that go with the scope of magic you’re trying to perform, but in its basis, you only need to wish and believe.”

“Oh? You’re a witch?” The young boy leaned forward in his seat, the knife having disappeared somewhere in the folds of his clothes. “Can you demonstrate?”

Anna looked slightly offended by the request, and Father Trifa stepped in to help.

“I’m perfectly willing to take you on your word, Miss Anna,” the holy man spoke soothingly, “but some people here have never seen anything particularly out of ordinary, and have hard time imagining it. A little showing-off would certainly give us all an idea what we can stream towards being.”

Well, Beatrice was definitely one of those people, so she’d also appreciate the demonstration.

Anna sighed with a put-upon expression, ignoring the faint ‘Anna?’ that came from the young boy, and extended her hands in an almost-conductor-like pose.

“If you insist, I’ll have to ask you to call me ‘Rusalka’. I only use Anna when I interact with normal people – I’ve left that woman in the dust long time ago.”

Rusalka. It was a foreign-sounding word, but strangely familiar to Beatrice – almost mythical, in fact, but which one was it… Yes! The water demons from Slavic myths that lured people to their watery graves in rivers and lakes, right?

“Miss Rusalka, then,” Father Trifa easily capitulated, and the woman grinned fiercely as she murmured a string of words.

Immediately, several balls of light appeared to illuminate the room, dancing around in a delicate dance until they formed a lovely, long-haired woman with no face that bowed to Heydrich and burst into a shower of multi-colored lights. Beatrice felt her jaw fall open and had trouble closing it, turning to her superior to check if she hadn’t dreamed it.

Nope, she hadn’t – Eleonore’s eyes were blown wide, lips slightly parted in total shock.

“That’s just a parlor trick,” Anna – no, Rusalka shrugged at the wide glances. “I always strive to learn new things, and this is nowhere near my limit.”

“Indeed, that is but a light show, in comparison to the true mysteries of the magic… not that many can reach far these days,” Krafft nodded. “The magic has been dying out for a long time, and the powers of the olden times have disappeared.”

“Weaklings,” the white-haired man – Wilhelm, was it? - muttered, and neither Krafft nor An-Rusalka bothered to correct him. “So, are we gonna learn the weak shit, or strong?”

“The strength of the magic is a fluid thing, _Herr_ Ehrenburg,” Krafft tilted his head, a mysterious smile on his face. “It changes according to the definition and scope of it, and to put a number to it is almost insulting… but yes, I will teach you the strongest form of magic – the Ewigkeit.”

“Ewigkeit…” Beatrice repeated the word, rolling it on her tongue. The word almost dripped with power, coming from Krafft’s lips, and Beatrice was unwillingly very intrigued.

“It is the power that will, once you attain enough power, grant you your most fervent wish, release you of the bonds of this world’s logic, even attain immortality and resurrect dead… given that you possess strong enough will to do so.”

Strong enough will? Sure, Beatrice had that in spades. Eleonore had not called the ‘pigheaded fool’ for nothing – if will and a wish was all it took, Beatrice would ace it, as would her superior.

“But first,” and suddenly the alarms started ringing in Beatrice’s ears at the innocent smile on Krafft’s face, “you will have to prove you have even a modicum of talent before I start teaching you.”

“Prove their talent, Karl? That’s not what you said to me,” Heydrich lazily said from behind, a small smile on his lips as well.

“Pardon my choice of word, dear friend,” Krafft smiled impishly at Heydrich. “The talent I’m referring to is the ability to connect with a sufficiently strong object that’ll be able to channel the immense power. Human bodies have limits after all… and not a single person here can handle it, with one notable exception of course.”

Beatrice somehow doubted that exception was her.

“So, before I can teach you, you will have to either find an object imbued with sufficient amount of emotion, or create one with your own emotions,” Krafft shrugged. “Until then, none of you are fit for being taught anything at all – in fact, you’re worse than useless.”

In that moment, Beatrice knew – she was going to hate every single moment of this guy teaching her, and judging by the looks on others’ faces, she was not alone.


End file.
